With large-scale popularity of terminals such as smartphones and tablet computers, a cellular access rate exponentially increases, and a conventional low-frequency radio access technology is increasingly incapable of meeting a growing access rate requirement.
To improve an access rate, a method of high-density base stations is used currently, so that coverage of each base station becomes smaller and the base stations become denser, so as to provide a higher access rate for a terminal in unit coverage. For example, if coverage of a first cell cell1 corresponding to a first base station eNB1 is 1 square kilometer, there are 70 terminals in the first cell cell1, and the eNB1 can provide an access rate of 7 Gbps, each terminal can obtain an access rate of 100 Mbps on average. As shown in FIG. 1, if seven base stations are configured in the 1 square kilometer covered by the cell1, seven cells (a cell2 to a cell8) corresponding to the seven base stations (an eNB2 to an eNB8) jointly cover the original cell cell1 corresponding to the eNB1, and a cell corresponding to each base station in the eNB2 to the eNB8 covers one-seventh of the cell1, and if the 70 terminals are evenly distributed in areas covered by the cell2 to the cell8, each base station in the eNB2 to the eNB8 serves ten terminals on average. In this case, if each base station in the eNB2 to the eNB8 provides an access rate of 7 Gbps, each terminal can obtain an access rate of 700 Mbps on average.
However, in the currently used method of high-density base stations, because base stations are denser, inter-cell interference (ICI for short) between neighboring cells is stronger, and performance of a cell-edge user deteriorates. Consequently, expansion of a cell capacity is greatly limited. As shown in FIG. 1, there is an overlap area between neighboring cells corresponding to neighboring base stations. When a terminal is located in the overlap area, when the terminal receives downlink information sent by a base station, the terminal is subject to interference from downlink information sent by a base station of a neighboring cell, that is, ICI.